Another day, another IPCC report supporting vested interests

A report from the International Panel on Climate Change claiming that, within 40 years, nearly 80 per cent of the world’s energy needs could be met from renewable sources, most notably through a massive expansion of wind and solar power, is just the latest example of that body spreading disinformation in order to prop up vested financial interests.

One of the very few reasons for venturing onto the website of the pisspoor Telegraph these days is the fact Christopher Booker still writes there. And he has taken on the subject with gusto and a clarity that leaves other journalists in the shade. As Booker explains:

What only came to light when the full report was published last week was the peculiar source of this extraordinarily ambitious claim. It was based solely on a paper co-authored last year by an employee of Greenpeace International and something called the European Renewable Energy Council. This Brussels-based body, heavily funded by the EU, lobbies the European Commission on behalf of all the main renewable industries, such as wind and solar. The chief author of the Greenpeace paper, Sven Teske, was also a lead author on Chapter 10 of the IPCC report, which means that the report’s headline message came from a full-time environmental activist, supported by a lobby group representing those industries that stand most to benefit financially from its findings.

Booker goes on the challenge the key claims in the report by resorting to the facts about wind power inefficiency and explaining just how much large corporations stand to make from wind farm developments, such as the one at Fullabrook Down in north Devon. Wind power is not about solving the energy challenge, it is about making vast sums of money at the expense of the taxpayer – first through the government subsidy handed out to make a wind farm financially viable, secondly through the law which forces energy companies to buy every watt of energy they produce regardless of the price and thirdly through the construction of conventional energy generation capacity that has to be on permanent standby to produce power when demand outstrips the supply due to the wind not blowing.

Step out of this foetid IPCC hothouse into the real world and consider what is going on at Fullabrook Down in north Devon, where they are constructing what will soon be the largest onshore wind factory in England. The developers boast of how the 22 giant 3MW turbines they are building on the hills between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe, at a cost of more than £60 million, will have the “capacity” to generate 66MW of electricity, and how they will contribute £100,000 a year to “community projects” to buy off the hostility of local residents.

In reality, this wind farm’s output is not likely to average more than 16.5MW, or 25 per cent of its capacity (the average output of UK turbines last year was only 21 per cent), an amount so pitifully small that it represents barely 2 per cent of the output of a medium-sized gas-fired power station. Yet for this, the developers can hope to earn £13 million a year, of which £6.5 million will be subsidy and of which the £100,000 they hand back to the local community will represent well under 1 per cent.

As always, we have to follow the money to understand how and why these wind farms are still allowed to be constructed. We have to identify the vested financial interests of big businesses and wealthy landowners who cash in at our expense to install wind turbines despite knowing the energy generation benefit to the consumer will be negligable.

We also need to be mindful of the state propaganda arms such as the Met Office which talk up and lend support to such projects, because rather than focus on getting on with doing their job better they prefer to focus on bandwagon jumping and pushing politicised agendas that support their own narrow commercial interests.

This is the reality of Britain today as our ‘representatives’ run riot with our money to line their own pockets and those of their wealthy backers. What defies belief is that there are still some useful idiots who want to deindustrialise the world, and who highlight examples in support of their argument that are shown to be false, who seem to think wind power is the way to go. Perhaps their vested interest is in candle making.